Several posts on this forum have made reference to ghost images (.gho) and the verb "ghosting" and about equally as many have made references to using dd images (.img) with linux. These are not synonymous. The ghosting technique makes use of the DOS tool Norton Ghost as opposed to a native command in linux. The advantages to using ghost is that it requires only one flash drive, has a progress indicator, and is a little more user-friendly to the linux illiterates of the world. The major disadvantage is that while the dd command is part of an open source OS, Norton Ghost is technically not free. Below follows a step by step guide to backing up and restoring a DT366 using a Ghost (.gho) image.

Using a Windows Machine:

1. Format a USB flash drive. (Naturally, one large enough to fit the desired image on it.)

4. Now the tricky part: be careful to observe the copyright laws here, but find yourself a copy of the .exe file "Ghost_83.exe" This should be included in Norton Ghost's most recent release, but is also so densely around the internet in illegal formats that I will not post a link here.

5. Open the HP USB Disk Format Tool after inserting the desired Flash Drive (Vista/7 users will need to right-click and run as administrator)

6. Select the device in the first menu, FAT32 in the second and label your drive in the space. Then check the boxes, "Quick Format" and "Create a DOS startup disk." Choose the radial button that says "using DOS system files located at:" and the browse to the location of the Win98 files you downloaded earlier. Click Start.

7. When the format is complete, copy the Ghost_83.exe file and your desired .gho image to the root of your drive (if you have hidden files set to be visible, you should see three other files in there too)

8. Connect a USB Hub to your DT, and connect the newly bootable USB drive and a keyboard to the ports. Turn the DT on and if necessary edit your BIOS (F2) to make your DT USB Bootable.

9. After arriving at the DOS prompt (C:\>), type "ghost_83" to open the ghost program. Press ENTER to get to the main menu and navigate using the arrow keys to the desired operation. Like Windows, use the Tab key to move around between items in the dialog box and enter to select. Once the operation is complete (windows CE 5 takes about 5 minutes, a 500MB image takes about 30), you are given the option to either continue or reset the computer. If you choose to reset the computer, be sure to unplug the USB drive so you don't boot back into DOS.

10. When the DT restarts, you should be staring at whatever status the DT was from which you got the ghost image. Keep in mind that you can use the same flash drive to do any ghosting operation, so long as you have enough space on it.

Hope this helps some of you to understand what's meant by "ghost images." Let me know if I can help anyone out with getting this to work.

-Trmptplyr2368

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Last edited by quotaholic on Sun Feb 14, 2010 10:01 am, edited 1 time in total.